of its silver to
other countries, principally to India and China, which use much silver
coin, but have little in the way of silver resources. The amount used at
home is divided between coinage and manufacture. The quantity coined
varies greatly from year to year, eight million ounces being about the
average. For manufacturing, jewelry, tableware, chemicals, etc., about
twenty million ounces, of which one-fifth is remelted silver, are used.
The demand for silver in manufacturing has doubled since 1898, and may
lead before many years to the reopening of the silver mines.

COPPER

The conditions of copper mining are exactly opposite from those of
silver. The Indians used almost no metal except copper, and for three
hundred years white men used the old Indian mines and refined the copper
by Indian methods. Better methods of mining copper and extracting it
from the ores have been employed for the last fifty years, but within a
dozen years the refining of copper has been revolutionized by electric
methods. An enormous amount has been produced, but production has been
kept down on account of the high prices. It is said that if the price
could be reduced one-half, ten times as much copper would be used. Most
of the uses of copper have arisen in the last twenty-five years. Its
greatest use is for electric wiring. Nothing can take its place, and the
use is increasing astonishingly.

Copper is used largely in alloys. Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin,
and its use has greatly increased in castings, fittings for buildings,
tablets, and statues.

A much more useful alloy is brass, made from copper and zinc. Brass is
very extensively used for parts of machinery, engines, automobiles, and
also for fittings for buildings. Sheet copper is used for sheathing for
ships, for boilers, and for various chemical processes carried on by
electricity or by acids. Very many of these processes have been
discovered within ten or fifteen years, and have largely increased the
uses for copper. One of the older uses of copper which is less common
now was for cooking utensils. Copper is used by the government for
coining one-cent pieces.

No single country compares at present with the United States in the
production of copper, but if reports be correct there is enough copper
in central Africa to supply the world for years to come. Next to the
United States, Spain mines the largest amount at present, and Japan
ranks next.

For many years the